Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Holy Pappadums, Batman! It's a Bollywood Superhero!


This post is something I wrote a couple of years ago.

I heard on the (Cool) Shite on the Tube podcast about a new Bollywood superhero movie called Krrish (2006). So when I noticed that it was showing at my local multiplex last week I couldn't resist checking it out. I'm not big on superhero movies, but I do really like a few of them - Spider-Man (2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Batman Begins (2005), Hellboy (2004)... And I'd never seen a Bollywood film. Oh, sure, I'd seen films which borrow from the Bollywood style, like The Guru (2002) and Bride & Prejudice (2004), but not a real one.

For those of you who don't know, Bollywood is the name given to a particular kind of movie made by studios in Bombay, India. These are extremely popular films in India and other parts of the world with a large Indian population. They are not at all like Indian art films - Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy or Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! (1988) . They don't deal with the harsh social realities of life among the poor. They are glitzy, glamourous romantic musicals. They all have big song and dance numbers regardless of whether they are comedies, tragedies, gangster films or superhero sci-fi films. And they often steal ideas from western films.

Krrish is wonderful. I may have expected it to be good for a cheap laugh, but I fell in love with the movie. I was moved by the melodrama, laughed at the slapstick comedy, grooved along to the hip-shaking song and dance numbers and felt like cheering when Krrish saved a little child from a burning circus tent. This is a fun, fun movie. Like most Bollywood films it is pretty long - 154 minutes - but never boring. Hey, it even has a comic relief orangutan in it. What more could you want? And I guarantee, you will fall in love with either sexy Priyanka Chopra or handsome Hrithik Roshan...maybe even both of them!





Krrish is a sequel to Koi... Mil Gia (2003). And Krrish 2 is due out next year.

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